


Monster in the Closet

by kingdom_of_mjch



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, F/M, M/M, One Shot Collection, Psychological Trauma, some messed up kids
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2019-10-04 02:45:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17296265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingdom_of_mjch/pseuds/kingdom_of_mjch
Summary: Heroes and people in different places and times mend the broken cracks in each other with gold.ORThere Are Too Many Spies in My Fucking Tower





	1. Here, Kitty

Bruce is making a fifth cup of chai when he hears it.  
He tentatively checks the basic security feeds, not wanting to wake the hyper-paranoid analysts in case it’s just a stray cat or something. He’d seen Clint flip shit over way less.  
But the pristine alleyways behind Stark tower were empty. Cat it is, Bruce decides and resumes tinkering with his statistical analysis. It was a reasonable hour for the R&D floor, the bare bones crew of AI’s silently humming their way into 2am. He might even get a solid 6 hours of sleep instead of his usual 4, Bruce thought. It helped that Tony’s frenzied creativity was away on a conference, although Bruce missed him in a Stockholm Syndrome-y way. The Super-Secret Spy Squad had just got back from three different recon missions and the tower was peaceful in a self-assured way, proud of being attack-free for almost a month. Bruce had been merrily reigning over the communal area for more than a week, relishing the alone time that he had trained himself to enjoy. Before Natasha found him, Calcutta had provided him with solace and purpose. Being able to freely create and think sustained him and he was rediscovering that, months since the last Code Green. Mentally stable was a good look on himself, Bruce thought smugly.  
The next thirty seconds threatened to throw that all away.  
He felt a shudder through his neck veins, green throbbing against his skin. He didn’t have spy instincts, but you would have to be blind to miss the flash of silver in the far side of the room. Behind the fridge. Who the fuck hides behind a fridge? Bruce quietly slipped a pistol out from under his desk and cocked it loudly.  
“Whoever you are, you’re in way more danger than I am.”  
He didn’t expect that to work, but it masked the sound of Dum-E sounding the silent alarm.  
“If you came here to kill someone, you should rethink that.” He was running out of cheesy movie dialogue and he hoped that the intruder wouldn’t call his bluff before help arrived. Also, that was the important samples’ fridge and a gunfight could ruin them.  
He was shit out of luck though, which definitely makes sense for him. Sole superhero in a stronghold gets cocky about being alive and some Hydra asshole ruins it within the week. But Bruce circles the fridge and his Stark-esque train of thought grinds to a halt.  
The Soldier.  
Bucky Barnes’ looked nothing and everything like the horror he was made out to be. His shirt and fatigues were shredded to ribbons, face lined with grease and oil. He looked like he’d gone three rounds with a diesel locomotive and won. But what struck Bruce was that his aura of danger seemed dim, overtaken by pure desperation, eyes wild and face set in grim hardness.  
“You,” Bruce breathed, gun impotently falling to his side. He knew that there was only one big, green reason that Barnes wasn’t tearing him limb from limb.  
But it seemed he truly wasn’t here for misguided revenge, or as a Hydra missive. Why was he here? What could have possessed this amnesiac prisoner of war to return to a building so haunted by ghosts of his past?  
Bruce’s gaze fell to his cybernetic arm and instantly understood. Barnes’ shoulder drooped and the most feared assassin of the 20th century could barely support the weight of his metal prosthetic’s misaligned plates and discordant wires.  
“Please,” the intruder begged, voice like nails over gravel.  
“I couldn’t fix it myself.”


	2. La Vita Dura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago. -Erica Jong

Birds were chirping and Natasha knew something was wrong.

The sun was kissed the horizon over Santorini and the leaves of every tree were dipped in a honeyed glow. The glittering ocean curled over rocks in a white foam, extending past what a civilian could see. Natasha’s enhanced vision simultaneously cataloged the length of the ocean in front of her and the exact dimensions of the hotel room behind her. Her dainty fingers wrapped around the railing and she pushed herself over the railing in one fluid motion.

The wind buffeted her face and her dress billowed around her plummeting form. Her squinted eyes could still see the horizon colors whipping past her as she swung once, twice, around a branch and dropped into a light crouch. She had arrived. 

Anyone watching the cliff-side would only see a flash of white and dismiss it as a bird. After all, no human could climb those jagged rocks and live to tell the tale. 

The mossy cave yielded to a large cavity lined wall to wall with electronic equipment, monitors, microphones, and storage caskets. Her damp makeshift woman-cave was made necessary when she decided to stay in the hotel of SHIELD’s most notorious racketeering thugs. The antimony and tungsten fragments in the rock walls shielded her equipment from tracers. Each piece of tech had been taken apart and put back together by the same light fingers dancing across the keyboard. Stark liked to brag about how impenetrable his playthings were, but the Russian would only trust her own skill. She had to call someone.

The grainy face of Sam Wilson popped into existence on the screen. Something to be said for video quality. “Hey, soldier, you just hanging out?” _Are you alone?_

Sam snorted good-naturedly. “Yeah, just about to call a phone sex line, bad timing.” _Alone. Go._

Her light tone gave way to a professional mission-report one. “Day four of the op. Cover secure. Mission objective well on its way to complete.” Her instinct for danger hadn’t flagged, though. 

“You feel a disturbance in the Force or something?” Sam had a healthy respect for her instincts.

“Thor dropped me a Bifrost message. Bruce made contact and asked for some Asgardian resources for one of his projects.” Sam understood that after Sokovia, Natasha was pretty much Banner’s handler. “Said he seemed off somehow.”

“Want me to check it out? I’m still on recon, but DC can survive without me for a few weeks.”

She was pleased with his answer. The Red Room had always paired her with perfect machines as partners, like _Soldat_ , but there was an imperceptible difference in having a partner who watched your back without once thinking of stabbing you in it.

“Yes, _spasibo_. I’ll check back in tomorrow, 0800.”

The shitty quality of the video didn’t distort Sam’s brilliant smile. The real communique was two hours after the time she said, just in case unwanted ears were listening in. One couldn’t be too careful while taking down international fugitives and morally ambiguous assholes. She disconnected the call without a goodbye and leaned back in her chair. She would be sorry to leave Italy. Even in the off-season, it radiated stillness and tranquility while still teeming with illegal activity and corrupt government bodies. The essence of any modern city. 

Truthfully, Natasha had nothing to do now. The next part of her mission was a dinner date with a slimy arms dealer whom she’d seduced a few nights ago, but she was bored. It would take less than 12% of her skills to flirt some information out of him and slip a pill into his wine. Shame to ruin a Vin Santo Rosso, but she already knew what it would feel like to watch the life slip out of him, how his callused fingers would loosen around the stem of his glass and how she would be packing her bags before his head hit the floor. She was bored of killing. 

Tony knew this mission was beneath her, as did she, but she took it to get a break from the intensity of life at the Tower.

“Hey, I’ve got some low-level chatter about some of Ricci’s guys in Tuscany. You wanna check it out?” Tony walked into the communal kitchen, not even looking up from his StarkPad.

“Ricci, really?” Nat didn’t look up from her Mario Kart game either. 

“Yeah, I mean, I could just forward it to Hill, but you’re kinda draining my supply of video games. And you’ve been wandering into R&D like a stray cat every day, so, Ricci.”

Natasha sighed and put down the remote. She was winning against the computer, anyway. “Show me what you got.”

And now, all she wanted was to be back at the Tower. How had her life changed so dramatically that she actively wanted to be amongst spies and heroes and geniuses instead of sipping wine, watching sunsets, and murdering scum? She had a job to do, but she wanted to be back with her team. Her mind wandered as she waxed her armpits for her murder date. She was sharply brought back to earth by a rap on the door. Two, one, two. She smiled.

She strolled over in her dress, hand on her Glock. She was 110% sure of who it was, but probability didn’t keep her alive. She threw open the French doors and punched Clinton Barton on the arm. He huffed loudly and picked her up into a hug.

“You look like shit,” he said, laughing. A running joke, the way he asked if she was okay. 

“You’re one to talk,” Nat said, bussing a kiss to his cheek. He actually _did_ look like shit, Hello Kitty band-aids decorating his bow hand and cheeks. His jaw was covered in rough blonde stubble, Nat’s favorite, and he was dressed in Clint Casual, which for normal people, was the line between chic and homeless. He didn’t have any bags.

Barton put her down, quickly checked her for injuries, which she hated, then bounded onto her mattress and sunk into thousand-thread count sheets. 

“I’m suing Stark, Talya. You always get the five-star hotels, the fancy wines and dinners, and I get humidity and leeches trying to suck me dry,” he needled her, closing his eyes probably for the first time in days.

Nat went back to delicately curling her hair, fingers dancing around her shoulders. “I’d take the Amazonian pythons over an Italian tourist group any day; you know that.”

“Yeah, I remember prying you off a poor Florida grandpa who tried to ask you for directions.”

“He also grabbed my tits,” Nat pointed out.

“Yeah, he was an asshole.” 

“What about your little pickpocket experience in Paris? We’re not gonna talk about that?” Nat teased, draping her final curl across her clavicle.

“I was absolutely justified in beating that guy’s ass, Nat. My Goonies wallet is more valuable than my reputation,” he bantered without opening his eyes.

Nat laughed as she leaped onto the mattress next to him and unstuck the uncomfortable wedgie that her thong created. Leaning into his shoulder, she pushed his hair back and gently traced fingers over each of his scratches.

“They’re nothing,” he murmured. 

“I know,” Nat whispered back. “How’s Kate?”

“Still crazy as shit. She’s getting scary good with the bow, Talya, I’m honestly afraid to put a gun in her hand.”

“We all have to grow up some time,” Nat shrugged. 

“I was hoping that time would be later, but she has to know how to protect herself.”

“She’s always known how to do that. It’s protecting others that takes bravery, takes all the courage you have.” Clint turned to her and smirked. “What?”

He chuckled. “Sometimes, I forget how much Mr. Captain has rubbed off on you. But then again, you are the original perpetrator of righteous fury. Steve’s got nothing on some of your post-KGB rants.” He said it casually, like that hadn’t been the toughest shit they’d ever had to face. Chitauri soldiers from space? Cake. Trauma and emotional destruction? Dealing with that took guts. 

She shrugged. “I’ve been the underdog and I’ve given orders to soldiers. My righteous fury doesn’t mean shit until the bad guys are dead or screaming.” She heard the ambivalence in her own voice and knew what Clint would say before he said it.

“What’s wrong? Something tells me you don’t believe that as much as you once did.”

Nat sighed. She didn’t have the desire to lie to him right now. “I’ve got Ricci dead to rights in half the time I expected to. I’m taking down racketeering thugs and arms dealers like it’s my job, which it is, but…,” she trailed off, unsure. 

“You want to retire?”

She turned fully to him, reading his expression. There was curiosity there, of course, beneath worry and love. She knew he would support her decision. She took a deep breath, pushed her Red Room instincts aside, and tried to be honest with him. 

“No. I’m good at what I do, and I can’t stop atoning for my sins until there’s a bullet in my brain.” Clint opened his mouth to protest, but she didn’t let him. “Don’t bother, Clint, we’ve had this argument before. But we have allies now. There are new players in this game, and my role isn’t playing Pretty Woman for some second-rate mafia shitbag. My place is with my team,” she stated with as much conviction as she could manage. 

Clint looked at her for a long time. Not in a searching way, simply looking at her lined face and corded calf muscles. There was history etched in every line of her body, in her perfectly straight spine, in her impeccable lipstick, and in every knife she had on her person. She was a stray, just like him. She may dress like the richest woman alive, and kill like she enjoyed it, but at the end of the day, she needed her family. They’d been let down and shot at by families before, but they trusted the inhabitants of the Tower. The trust of a spy was hard to earn, and even harder to keep. Clint knew how much it took for Natasha to admit this to him.

“Okay. Let’s go home.”


End file.
